...on reflection, that advice isn’t as well-phrased as it could be. “Be able to comfortably bike for an hour without resting” would also be a valid example, even though it has a time element to it. The point is to have a specific, objectively-observable thing to accomplish that’s as close to my actual goal as possible. If I were to instead state my goal as ‘go to the gym twice a week for 3 months’, my brain would count it as a success even if I only did 5 minutes of actual exercise each time. (And, because my brain knows that about itself, and knows that meeting the stated goal won’t help with the actual goal, it’s unlikely to even attempt to meet the stated goal, but that seems like a deeper level of complication than you’re experiencing.)
I usually stick to goals where at least a ballpark value of N is obvious from the context—I don’t have any well-tested advice on what to do when it’s not.
Interesting. How do you choose N? Do you have any sense of how or why this works for you?
...on reflection, that advice isn’t as well-phrased as it could be. “Be able to comfortably bike for an hour without resting” would also be a valid example, even though it has a time element to it. The point is to have a specific, objectively-observable thing to accomplish that’s as close to my actual goal as possible. If I were to instead state my goal as ‘go to the gym twice a week for 3 months’, my brain would count it as a success even if I only did 5 minutes of actual exercise each time. (And, because my brain knows that about itself, and knows that meeting the stated goal won’t help with the actual goal, it’s unlikely to even attempt to meet the stated goal, but that seems like a deeper level of complication than you’re experiencing.)
I usually stick to goals where at least a ballpark value of N is obvious from the context—I don’t have any well-tested advice on what to do when it’s not.